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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Many black people, including those who fiercely defend the notion that they are West Indian and not Africans, become visibly upset when they hear that HIV originated in Africa. Some of them seek refuge in the theory that HIV originated in the USA in some laboratory. Ironically, it is the blind ignorance some black people have of Africa and the selective attention that others pay to Africa that lead to unnecessary misunderstandings.

Africa is the ancestral home of human kind. Africa has built much of the rest of the world by way of exploited materials and slaves. Africa is the ideal, in fact the perfect, natural candidate for the origin of HIV and many other viruses undergoing mutation and passage to humans. The story starts to become murky and unscientific when scientists speculate with no basis in fact. Or worse, use a combination of facts along with their prestige and racial proclivities to blind them to alternative possibilities.

Speculation: HIV jumped from monkey to man in Africa because of Africans eating monkey meat or through some other transmissible route such as scarification. The fact is, no one knows how HIV jumped from monkey to man but jumped it certainly did. It would be just as irresponsible to say that white colonialists in Africa engineered the transmission directly or indirectly from monkey to man.

Recent hard, scientific evidence about the route of HIV out of Africa has been published by Michael Worobey et al in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They tested archived blood samples from Haitian who immigrated to USA after 1975 and progressed to AIDS by 1981. This short time lag is consistent with presumed infection with HIV before they immigrated. The scientists conducted sophisticated laboratory analyses included DNA studies and alignment of the results with HIV molecular data.

Computerized statistics reveled that there were 0.003 chances in 100 that HIV went from Africa to the USA. This extremely low probability is virtually equivalent to nil. Alternatively, there were 99.8 chances in 100 that HIV went from Africa first to Haiti. The scientific work is so remarkable, the scientists estimated that HIV moved from Africa to Haiti some time around 1966 (1962 to 1970). They also estimated that the ancestry of most HIV stains in the USA originated from one common ancestor virus that came from Haiti round about 1969.

Speculation: Having done all the brilliant work, the scientists go on to speculate that based on the period from 1962 to 1970, HIV arrival in Haiti may have occurred with the return of one of the many Haitian professionals who worked in the newly independent Congo in Africa in the 1960s. How now brown cow? Knowing that black people (and all Haitians are not black) have no monopoly on travel between Africa and Haiti, it would be just as irresponsible of me to say that (to put it non-racially) someone other than Haitians brought HIV from Africa to Haiti.

Speculation: The good scientists also stated that the “most parsimonious explanation” for the pattern of the particular subtype of HIV seen in many other parts of the world is that it emanated from “a single founder event linked to Haiti”. No problem so far. But they speculate. “This most likely occurred when the ancestral pandemic clade virus crossed from the Haitian community in the United States”. A clade is a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor. It would be just as irresponsible of me to say that HIV went from Haiti to USA via American tourists. Worse, the minister of tourism would probably demand my head on a platter if I were to remind us all that tourism (like HIV) is everybody’s business and, by the way, the beach is just the beginning.

When I hear the word parsimonious, I think of its noun, parsimony, meaning the careful or sparing use of money or other material resources. Immediately, my mind runs to my thesaurus and I recall its synonym, niggardly. And without any stretch of my imagination, I think of the unpronounceable, unprintable “N word”. It serves me right for speculating on scientific data and taking into account my ancestral background.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Imagine this. A supporter of a political party wakes up in the middle of the night drenched in dripping, cold sweat. He cannot go back to sleep because he dreamed another party won the next general elections. He decides to write down the details of his dream to warn his party.

In the dream, he sees a woman in a black hat getting off a bench, talking and passing sentence after sentence on the executive members of her party. She is telling them that, firstly and finally, even if there was no corruption in the party, they must admit that the charge had stuck and it must be removed to repair the party. To do this, they must understand why organizations become corrupt. There are similar causes of corruption in any small country. Checks and balance are replaced by bank checks and bank balance. The main cause of corruption in small states is not greed. Greed is universal. If channeled appropriately, greed is good.

Insufficient stimulating and challenging physical and mental work at early and crucial stages of personal and organizational development and the consequent idleness, slackness and lackadaisicalness are the fundamental causes of corruption in small and large developing states. This is true of all political parties and professional organizations, including security forces.

The other problems to solve are basic ones like healthcare, education, jobs, security and food. She tells them that one day she was in a Chinese supermarket and the solution hit her like a kung fu. She admires the thrift of the Chinese. Some of them we regard as recent arrivals have been here for over a decade and have Antiguan children. She recently met a Russian woman who lived here so long, she was proud to have an Antiguan born Russian child.

What about the trip a friend of hers took to England the very day after the 2004 general elections? On the same flight were at least 75 people of Middle Eastern origin. They all had Antiguan and Barbudan passport and spoke little or no English. Antigua and Barbuda is an umbrella nation. So many disparate and desperate people enjoy the shade of its parasol.

In the supermarket, she wonders how many of the so-called “ordinary people” it would take to set up and operate a co-operative supermarket in their community. Politicians must stop promising a rose garden to gain political power. We must empower the people to cultivate their own rose garden and choose and run the services they need. She tells them the party must empower the people at the local level because real freedom is the ability of people to choose wisely and become the authors of their own lives. She has their attention well locked up.

Money is already moving through the community. There is a long, proud, unsung history of box-money co-operatives. The real task is to convince the people that we must either swim together or sink one by one. And when it comes to security, just who is going to be bold enough or crazy to steal from and survive in a community co-operative environment with legal, community watch and citizen patrol? In fact, some of the reformed criminals, and you know how smart they were, will run some of the local businesses, knowing that other reformed criminals like them are watching them like a hawk. And she boasts that she knows the criminals from a previous profession. Security is no longer a problem. There is real, meaningful employment and empowerment. Real checks and balance are in, corruption is out. The community pride is sky high.

She continues to pass sentence. The central economic plan of one party is to make the private sector the engine of growth. But it is extremely difficult to facilitate the status quo private sector and at the same time bring new, grassroots private sectors on board so that businesses in St. John’s city and the various communities can be more reflective of the heterogeneous population mix. These are highly guarded, economic positions. People can get in serious trouble talking about economic reform on radio programmes and suggesting changes without due regard to the sensitive issues of nationality and citizenship.

Should we repeal person income tax? The community based projects and the demonstrable empowering of people will require decentralization of sufficient funds. If, outside of government, our party can get the community to do so much with what the people already have, imagine how much more we can do in power. We do not have to make unrealistic promises if our works go beyond promises.

Then the dream becomes a nightmare. The lady in the black hat tells them to reduce the number of government ministers by half. Who needs so many ministers when local government is so strong? But then it hit the dreamer. This must be a unique, truly reformed political party. The spoils of political victory must include walking away from old arenas and changing the whole course of political tribal war in small states.

Call it a tent or call it a parasol, no political party can do anything fundamentally significant for people without empowering them to form co-operative groups and build on family and other groupings already formed. Only then can we build a tent in our community and enjoy the shade of our parasol.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A remarkable thing has happened. The closing of the Tuesday night’s discussion and call-in program on Observer Radio is a signal moment in radio in Antigua and Barbuda. Charges of racism have been levied at the guests on Serpent’s show, particularly, I suspect, in reference to “The Third Man”. I recall in crystal clarity the precise moment The Third Man made a particular comment one Tuesday night and I knew immediately that the program was doomed in our bipolar and disordered Antigua and Barbuda. He said, in effect, that St. John’s city should look more like us, Antiguans.

The charge of racism is false, unreasonable and smacks of typical, offensive self-defense. As a frequent caller reminded us, black people cannot by definition be racist when they challenge the status quo to obtain equality at best, since racism means the superiority of one race over another. It is as preposterous as a simmering pot on a stove being accused by the stove of being fiery.

The counter argument that should have been legitimately levied at “The Third Man”, and Serpent and the other two guests should have pounced on it, was the central and essential question of nationality and citizenship. These are fundamental, crucial questions that all of us are trying to grapple with and debate at this mixed-up, pepper-pot period of our history. A civil, truthful and polite discussion about the sensitive, important subjects of nationality and citizenship is the only sensible, democratic way forward.

To stifle opinion because accusers are unwilling to come on radio or call in and defend their position against those who offend them is to turn Observer Radio on its head. The comment that it takes a difference of opinion to make a horserace will be as vacant as looking at masses of expectant spectators at a horserace with only a single, ambling, quixotic horse in distant sight.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Almost everyone has assumed a position on the Barbuda Land Act. Isn’t it just lovely to see big brother finally coming to his senses because of the actions and claims of little sister? I come to everything Barbudan, including the Barbuda Land Act issue, with a history of ignoring Barbuda until it dawned on me over ten years ago that writing Antigua and Barbuda in my mailing address instead of Antigua alone, stopped my journals from ending up in some other country. I have been to Barbuda only once, on official, forensic duty for one day.

There are obvious flaws in the Barbuda Land Act. Yes, there should have been more public consultation and yes, the one-nation two-system policy faces a difficult or impossible evolution. Quite frankly, when we Antiguans have allowed our aerial, front-door lands, and others, to be sold to a private person and turn around, like Little Jack Horner, and remark how beautiful the airport looks, we have lost the right to tell Barbudans anything about public consultation on land. The fact that politicians committed the first sin of commission and politicians are again committing a second sin of omission, simply points to the inertia of the populace. Will we rise up now as we should have spoken out before?

For those who cannot get their heads around the very thought of our national, public purse paying for the advantage Barbudans enjoy over land, there is a simple answer. No, the answer is not that your head is not a rubber band; it would be an insult to say that. It is simply the retributive price of remembrance we Antiguans must pay for what we have allowed to happen to Antigua. Bring on the Antigua Land Act if Antiguans are really serious about public consultation about land and then we can try to amend the flawed Barbuda Land Act.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

There has been much talk about the problem with boys and the need for men to stand up, step up and march to the beat of different drum. The main argument is that our boys see a short road to what we call success so they avoid the long, disciplined road of a good education in school. We argue that they miss out on the joy of having someone read to them, exercising their imagination listening to a radio drama and falling in love with the sound of words, etc. But joy comes in various guises and disguises.

Boys are not the only ones taking a shortcut to success. Many sensible, young women will tell you why they wittingly have children with a no-good man. They reason that they can fulfill their desire to have children without the messy problems they perceive running through some marriages. Obviously, these girls have decided to make one mistake and avoid the major mistake of missing out on education. Boys are making the humongous mistake with the only thing that ensures the formation of the whole person.

Music in general and pan music in particular is a guarantied way to bring men and boys, and indeed the whole family in whatever form, together. I will get a lot of stick, appropriately punned, for saying the following but so be it: Pan music cannot be the salvation if we continue to regard, practice and play the steel pan as we are doing. I want to tell you that steel pan instruments are pieces of the most scientific instruments ever invented and that they are the perfect teaching tool for music, logic, beauty, discipline, and many vocations seemingly remote from music, such as accounting and marketing, among others.

Volumes of data have been written in this newspaper and elsewhere about the singular geometry of the leading or single tenor pan. Its design is based on all of the 12 musical notes that exist in Western music, arranged in the cycle of fourths (clockwise) or fifths (anti-clockwise). This circular pattern is the roadmap of Western music used by everyone form Bach to Coltrane to Bob Marley and Maroon 5. No other modern musical instrument carries the blue print of Western Music so conspicuously in its design. None.

There is more. All 12 musical notes can be aligned in two rows of 6 notes each. In each row, every note is separated by the same spacing (the musical interval of a whole step) from its neighbour. There are only two such rows because any other row is just a displacement of any one of the two fundamental rows. These two rows of notes (the whole tone scales in music) are portrayed in the design of the double second steel pan. This scale was used by Mozart in his Musical Joke, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade and by Stevie Wonder in the introduction to You Are The Sunshine of My Life, to give a few examples.

There is more. There are steel pan instruments comprising 3 pans. Common sense will tell you to divide the 12 notes such that 4 notes are assigned to each pan. Musical science tells us to arrange the notes so that in all 3 pans with 4 notes each, the individual notes are separated by an identical spacing (the musical interval of a minor third).

There is more. There are steel pan instruments comprising 4 pans. Again, common sense and musical science result in 3 notes in each pan and the individual notes in each of the 4 pans separated by the identical spacing (the musical interval of a major third). Similarly, the six-base instrument with 6 drums has 2 different notes in each pan separated by an identical spacing (the musical interval of a perfect fifth). Pan design is no arbitrary guess work, my Caribbean people. It is the perfect personification of Western music.

There are some steel pans with asymmetrical note spacing. These exceptions simply underscore the overwhelming, unique science involved in the symmetrical steel pan instruments. It is this symmetry, this new understanding of what it means and implies, as well as the reading of musical notation that we must teach in the pan yard. This teaching must embody science including the geometry of a circle and how Coltrane constructed an equilateral triangle in the circle. Also, we can invoke mythology and numerology to tell steel pan stories of 12 musical notes divided into instruments of 2, 3, 4 and 6 pans giving rise to sets of 6, 4, 3 and 2 notes respectively. We are fooling around with a unique, rich legacy that others can see.

We must redesign the pan yard to reflect the perfect, celestial architecture of the pan and bring to bear the disciple, love and caring that music engenders, being on the constant lookout for the negative associations that follow sterile music, un-sterile relationships and superficial knowledge. We may have to bypass those musicians and pannists who continue to resist change and beat pan intuitively without taking the time and making the effort to unravel the fantastic science involved in steel pan instruments. This new path will pave the way for the discipline that must be the new paradigm in a scientific, artistic pan yard in which we also consider the destructive effects of loud music on the ear and learn to caress or gently feel-up the pan.

Dorbrene O’Marde has sent me an e-posting from the Trinidad Express newspaper registering the positive effects of steel band thwarting teenage violence and school dropouts in a prototype project in US Virgin Island. The project was lauded by Harvard University and the Ford Foundation in 1988 as being among the Top Ten Innovative Programmes. This is tried and tested transformation of youths through music.

You may think that if all of the above is true, crime and violence should not be so rampant in the home and Mecca of steel pan, Trinidad and Tobago. Well now, brown cow; it remains the grueling, unenviable task of someone far more capable than I to disabuse you of your resident (dare I say constitutive?) stupidity and replace it with the stark consideration of just what the youths of Trinidad add Tobago would really be like were it not for an ideal teaching tool and the most perfect musical instrument ever invented: the steel pan.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

When was the last time you went to one of our 365 beaches? I know you can’t swim but that is no excuse. I used to go to the beach more often when I couldn’t swim compared to my rare visit now that I can swim. What’s the reason for the phobia that many of us, black people, seem to have for sea water? Can it be that race memory of the terrors of the dreaded Middle Passage has made some of us afraid that our drowned ancestors might pull us down below to meet them? What utter nonsense.

Trust me. If I can learn to swim, a stone on top of an elephant can swim too. Growing up in New Winthropes village, we would go to the bayside (as we called it) relatively often. But I was always warned by my grandmother not to go into the sea. When I was allowed to go to the beach, I was always in the company of big people. I soon realized that the big guardians could not swim either, hence the warning from my grandmother made sense, especially with the constant rejoinder that I was my mother’s only child.

So whenever we journeyed to Jabberwock Beach, my main pleasure was to follow the instructions written on a huge, wooden, seemingly abandoned building near the roadside about 300 yards south of Jabberwock. The name, Firestone, was emblazoned on its west side. No one had told me that Firestone referred to a brand of tyre. Being the most obedient child of my mother, if only because I did not want to be worthy of death, I simply pelted the building with stone, as the sign instructed.

At the seaside, I would wet my feet, make a few splashes, pick and eat some seaside grapes and whatever else we had taken along, sit on the sand and wondered what was hidden beyond the horizon. In the while, especially at picnics at more wooded beaches, a few big people would disappear and reappear with a strange glow on their faces as if they had gone sailing in the sea of bushes where something fishy had occurred. After a few hours at Jabberwock Beach and when they were all ready, we would trek back home and I would bid the poor Firestone building goodbye with a few passing salvos.

Many decades later, I was wading in the water at Fort James Beach one day when some beach cricketers tried to alert me to the ball that was hit into the sea. Since I had been in the water before they started playing, and finding it difficult to come out of the water and look like a non-swimmer, I had devised a plan for this eventuality. As the ball left the bat and soared overhead, I started doing some graceful, callisthenic exercises in the water from which I obviously could not be disturbed to fetch a mere, misdirected ball.

Then I found a good swimming instructor. I spent many lessons just splashing water onto my face to get accustomed to that sensation and coordinating my breathing with the presence of the water. After that, I would stand in the water at waist level, or above that, lean forward and turn my face to either side in and out of the water, initially holding my nose, then just holding my breath and breathing at the appropriate time. Truth be told, although I understood the lesson plan, it became so boring, I actually longed for the day when I would abandon the instructions and swim all around the island. Maybe that was part of the plan too.

Next, I would hold my nose or hold my breath and try to stay completely under the water. To my initial surprise, I found this very difficult. The water would literally push me back up as I tried to stay under. I kid you not. I almost ran out of the sea when I realized that was the same principle of flotation or buoyancy that Archimedes, the Greek scientist, had discovered in his bath and caused him to run out of his bathtub naked, shouting in the street, “Eureka (I have found it)!” There is a wild, adulterated version of what Archimedes actually found in the bath water, and what he must have been looking for in the first place, but that is for another time and another place since this is a respectable newspaper.

So after my Eureka moment, I realized that all that remained to learn to swim was to learn to coordinate my breathing with the movement of parts of my body. But, honestly, the hardest part of learning to swim as an adult was to overcome the initial fear of water (my grandmother had long passed on) and to get accustomed to the sensation of water on the face with my eyes opened, something we can try easily at home every morning.

As a result of learning to swim, you will develop a healthy and abiding respect for the sea and get much pleasure and many health benefits from swimming. You will obey all safety and rescue instructions, such as never to go swimming too far alone. But before you run off to find a good swimming instructor, you must learn to duly recognize and respect all of our ancestors on dry land so you do not have to worry about meeting them below sea level. What utter nonsense.

The Observer PM of November 7, 2007 carried the sad story of Jamaican man who drowned in a river in Suriname. He could not swim and neither could any of his family members who were all in the river when he ventured into deep waters.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I write to add another perspective to the article in Sun Weekend of 5 July called, "Can Masturbation Cause Blindness'. I do concur with the opinions of the two local doctors, Drs. Christian and Charles that masturbation does not cause blindness. However, I wish to note that there may in fact be a connection between masturbation and vision.

During sexual stimulation, a substance called nitric oxide is released. The release of nitric oxide leads to an increase in another substance called cGMP. The role of cGMP is to effect an increase in the inflow of blood into the penis. An erection requires increase in the inflow of blood into the penis.

Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your wishes,) cGMP does not last forever. It is degraded by an enzyme called PDE5. If there is too much PDE5, there will be marked degradation of cGMP, less inflow of blood, and loss of the erection. Alternatively, if there is less PDE5, there will be little degradation of cGMP, more inflow of blood, and maintenance of erection.

The drug Viagra helps to promote and maintain an erection by inhibiting PDE5. PDE5 belongs to a group of substances called PDEs, which include PDE3 and PDE6 among others. PDE5 is found in the penis. PDE3 is found in the heart. PDE6 is found guess where?) in the eyes.

In manufacturing Viagra, it was important to find a drug that was highly selective for PDE5 compared to other PDEs. This selectivity was achieved to a great extent but it was not absolute and complete. Viagra has approximately a 4,000-fold selectivity for PDE5 versus PDE3. This is important because PDE3 is involved in the control of contraction of the heart. Why gain an erection via less PDE5 and lose control of the contraction of your heart via less PDE3?

Viagra is only about 10-fold as potent for PDE5 compared to PDE6, which is found in the eyes. This lower selectivity of Viagra for PDE6 (eyes) compared to PDE5 (penis) is thought to be the basis for abnormalities related to colour vision observed with higher doses of Viagra. Indeed, there may be temporary difficulty discriminating blue and green colours at certain doses of Viagra. However, evaluation of visual function at doses up to twice the maximum recommended dose revealed no effects of Viagra on visual acuity, pressure in the eyes, or the reaction of the pupils of the eyes.

Nonetheless, there is a link between an erection and the eyes. Different members of the same family of substances, PDE5 and the PDCE6 are found in the penis and the eyes respectively. Masturbation may not cause blindness, but there is a biochemical connection between the penis and the eyes.

In regards to the temporary difficulty discriminating blue and green colours, any confusion over the colour of the dress of one girlfriend over that of another will only be temporary. You can always blame it on the blue pill…..or is it the green one?

Friday, November 2, 2007

There are at least two reasons for feeling cheated when something (or someone) is stolen from you. There is the value of the stolen item and there is the fact that some lesser idiot outsmarted a greater idiot. And these two reasons are not necessarily in that order of importance.

I can vividly remember the first time I was involved in a theft. Actually, I did not see it as a theft at all at the time. My very big (huge in fact), older and more powerful cousin, who was known to beat up people and strangle poor, little, innocent animals for less than nothing, had commanded poor, little me to take two shillings and six pence from our grandmother’s money pan.

He was set on using the money to gamble and he swore he would bring it back with a little something extra for me. He was so persuasive and I was so tearfully fearful, I totally ignored the fact that all the money in the pan at the time of his commandment, amounted to exactly two shillings and six pence.

On the bad Friday of my crucifixion, as the effects of licks from the packing of a tyre ascended from my bottom to my head and I sought refuge at the rear of the normally, humanly impassable, old stonewalled oven, then used as a fowl coop, I discovered that successful stealing was very hard work. It demanded so much patience, discipline and attention to detail, its requirements were similar to the qualities that were later written in my report card as head boy of the Antigua Grammar school.

Should I believe that really good thieves are born and not made? How else can you explain that infamous New Winthorps village thief who used to waltz into Miss Williams shop with an empty West Indian Biscuit Company (WIBISCO) tin and, without passing over a red cent or a blue penny, danced back out with a full one?

He was so good, he would provoke an argument outside the shop and swore that he would cut up somebody in fine slivers like WIBISCO biscuit and stuffed them in the empty (now full) biscuit tin, which he would sit on and pretend to kick about as if it was the same empty tin he had deliberately sat on and kicked about beforehand.

Another expert village thief was the shop hand who contrived a chronic cough to mask the popping sound of the opening of a bottle of soda pop. He was so successful, he was taken repeatedly to Dr. Wizenger, who thought he had discovered an unusual case of tuberculosis. The fact that tuberculosis was called consumption, did not alert the good doctor, who practiced just to the west of The Antigua Girls High School, that the poor feller was not consumed by tuberculosis but rather, the rascal was consuming the shop’s soda pop.

So how do you catch these thieves? You have to figure them out like a detective, especially if the police have their hands full. I recall the time when I was studying for a very important, final exam at university and someone stole my bicycle and then my clothes from the clothes line. There was no point in studying for a final undergraduate, pathology exam if the simple matter of a theft could not be deduced. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Careful, macroscopic examination revealed that the only remaining item on the clothes line was a tam or woolly hat. Obviously the thief, or thieves, was amongst the dreadlocks living up the hill nearby, who had more tams than Tam o’ Shanter in the poem by Robert Burns. But my dear Watson, it is one thing to deduce correctly, it is quite another matter entirely to go marching into Zion or enemy territory chanting, “Calling all dreads and dreadlings!”….Whatever a dreadling was.

Maybe the correct approach is to become a thief yourself; but only to steal from yourself; a sort of Robin Falsehood. After all, if you become renown as the thief who breaks into his own place, calls the police, lies on himself in court so that he ends up in jail, breaks out of jail with greased lightening speed (okay, ignore the grease), only to break into his own place again and again, who on earth would want to mess with you?

But all of this is for the petty, analog thieves. How do you plan to deal with the brazen, white collar, electronic, digital scamps who would steal your identity from under your very nose? And then have the nerve to ask you who do you think you are; telling you to identify yourself? They must be thinking that if you cannot smell a rat right under your nose, you certainly will not miss the cheese.

My response to the need for a solution to these modern-day, white collar, digital crimes, criminals and scamps, is that I am working on a sophisticated but user-friendly, digital plan. Suffice to say, that somewhere in the plan is an electronic, digital “bull-bud” (this time, really greased lightening fast), a.k.a. bull-pistle, a.k.a. a tough, long whip made from the penis of a bull (Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage). When the swanky, scampish, scalawags log on to my belongings the next time, my WWW dot com, becomes ”Whips, Whops, Whoops, that done”.

About Me

The hard work and adversity of my
parents and the dedication of my teachers ignited in me a passion for arts and
science and an everlasting quest for knowledge.

I spent 13 years in Jamaica at UWI,
where I met my wife, Norma and we brought two wonderful children, Sawandi and
Sabriya, into this world. Sawandi is a doctor and musician and a Red Bull Music
Academy Winner. Sabriya has a Masters Degree in Psychology. She is the 2007
Jamaican National Visual Arts silver-medalist, a photographer and a poet.

I am the director of the Mount St.
John’s Medical Center laboratory. My wife and I manage our private lab, Medpath
Clinical Laboratory. I spent about 3 years in England pursuing additional
postgraduate training for periods from 3 months to 1 year. My understanding of
music is largely due to Melba Liston, former head of the Afro-American
department of the Jamaica School of Music.

I play the soprano, alto and tenor
saxophone. Other musical instruments I play or practice on include: single
tenor and double seconds steel pans, clarinet and bass clarinet, flute alto
flute and piccolo, violin, acoustic bass guitar, accordion, piano, harmonica,
English horn, bassoon.